


starved

by noveltea_lolita



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, POV Alternating, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, atsumu is a porn star, sakusa is a doctor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:20:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27993648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noveltea_lolita/pseuds/noveltea_lolita
Summary: One is emaciated, starved for any form of physical contact but pushing it away every time it comes close, claiming he doesn’t need it.One craves love and commitment, so different from the liars of the past who promised him forever’s, but left him broken before forever even came close.Perhaps together, their starvations can be quelled..Alternatively: Sakusa is touched starved and the few relationships he’s been in ended quickly because of his extreme distaste for physical affection. Then he meets Atsumu, who ends up teaching him what’s so special about the touch of another human.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi, Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 11
Kudos: 49





	starved

**Author's Note:**

> SakuAtsu has consumed my life so I wrote a fic about them. This probably won’t have consistent updates oops.
> 
> Heed the warnings, look at the tags. The future of this fic will have two major triggers, past sexual assault of a minor, and past relationship abuse. These triggers will be added to the notes of the chapters where they are addressed/talked about, but please be careful either way! :)
> 
> Edit: Some expressed concerns with the word “anorexic” in the summary, and I have to apologize. Of course I am familiar with the word and it’s meaning, and I shouldn’t have used it in the summary. I myself struggle with it (not to a major extent tho) and since I never get triggered by mere names of diagnoses, I put it in there without any thought. I should’ve thought about other people’s triggers instead of only my own, that was so selfish of me. So once again, I really am sorry. It wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone!

The traffic from Tokyo’s always busy streets and sidewalks was a comforting hum in Sakusa’s ears from where he sat in his swiveling white chair in front of one of the several desks in his flat. This particular one was the smallest, adjacent to the plush couch in front of the mounted television that never seemed to be on. The curtains were drawn back, they were never closed because Sakusa never had anything to hide, letting in the twinkling city lights that acted as the stars they blinded and erased in the inky black sky.

For someone who lived in the busier parts of Tokyo for his entire life, the noise was like a constant ringing in his ears, and just like the people who suffered from that vexatious condition, Sakusa learned to live with it. Maybe it wasn’t ideal, but it was what he knew.

“ _Watching porn alone_?” a sultry female voice crackled from his earbuds. “ _Click here for-_ ”

“No, thanks,” Sakusa mumbled, sliding the cursor over the large red X at the corner of the pop-up add.

The screen of his laptop lit up with rows of thumbnails, each one more explicit than the last, preposterously titled in ways that should have been appealing but just made Sakusa cringe and scroll past them. The same could be said about the thumbnails. Months ago, disgust would have curled in the base of his stomach and spread like a cancerous disease, consuming his muscles, bones, and skins, shattering his heart and sending images into every crevice of his mind until he was stumbling into the bathroom and heaving over the toilet.

Now there was only the slightest twitch of irritation beneath his skin from the outlandish titles and thumbnails. The urge to vomit, to shower until the hot water had burned away a layer of his skin, was absent after months of grueling hard work. He should give himself a gold star.

Aside from the bright screen of the laptop, the only other sources of light in his flat were the dim island lights hanging above the bar counter in the kitchen and the city leaking in from the balcony doors. It was hazardous to his eyes, he was aware of this, but at this particular moment he didn’t care. He wanted to find one video to watch.

Sakusa knew most people weren’t so analytical when choosing a porno- gods, he truly despised that word- but it was one of the things he ended up concentrating on instead of the sexual acts themselves. He didn’t want close ups, washed out lighting, or odd scenarios. Nothing crazy. Just porn.

Just normal porn after a long day at work.

 _But what does it matter? It’s not like you’re going to actually get off on it._ He rubbed his ear against his shoulder as he kept scrolling and disregarding the videos he passed.

“What the hell?” He paused when a particular title caught his eye- well, it wasn’t the title itself; it was the views and rating. 6.8 million views, 1 million positive rates. Not that he spent much time on explicit sites like this one, but even he knew that was a rarity. Interest peaked, his eyes lazily read the title.

 _Ketsuman takes control of his dom_. Now there was a word he hadn’t heard of before.

Sakusa didn’t know whether to gag from the title or click on the damn video just because of the ratings. His eyes caught the thumbnail to the left of the title, but there wasn’t much to see, just a man stretched out on his stomach atop a bed, cheek resting against his arms, and a mop of blond hair covering half of his eyes. It was hard to take in any other details since the thumbnail is so small, but he doesn’t particularly care either way. While he was rather picky about quite a bit of videos, the actors weren’t one of them.

Outside, a car horn blares. Someone laughs. Tires screech against pavement. The noise is loud enough tonight that Sakusa is aware of it, and it adds to the irritation building in his chest. It shouldn’t be this hard to choose one damn video to watch. He didn’t need to be so picky. This was just a task he needed to complete, not for the pleasure or the addiction, but for the “avocation of self-knowledge”, or whatever it was that egotistical psychiatrist said.

Well, he may as well see what 6.8 million people found so interesting. With a sigh, he clicked on the thumbnail of the blond and was taken to a buffering video. As the video loaded, he pushed the earbuds further into his ear and tucked his knees beneath his chin. It was sort of funny how comfortable he was, all snuggled up in his favorite hoodie and sweats, like he was about to watch a movie.

It was either funny or pathetic, and Sakusa was way too tired to differentiate between the two.

The buffering ceased and the black screen gave way to an average sized bed with the person from the thumbnail sitting on the edge of it, naked aside from the black thigh highs clinging to toned legs. The man was smiling at someone or something behind the camera, crossing and uncrossing his legs to tease the audience of what was between them.

Sakusa, however, wasn’t interested in the hidden jewels because he couldn’t get past the _yellow_ mop of hair on the man’s head. Wispy strands bounced atop a dark undercut as he tilted his head back to look up at the other man who walked in, this one only dressed in a pair of jeans so tight, the seams were straining against the man’s impressive rear. It didn’t matter how the guy chose to style his hair, there was no way anyone could ignore the ridiculous color. He wondered how so many people liked this video.

“ _Lay down_ ,” the man in the jeans commanded, followed by snapped fingers and a low, “ _on your stomach_.”

The blond did as he was told. He pushed himself away from the edge and slowly crawled over the bed, shoulders bending and hips swaying. His ass was clad in a pair of lacey black panties. When Sakusa first started watching these videos, he had been surprised by the amount of men who wore lingerie- he hadn’t even been aware there was a such thing as _men’s lingerie_ \- and while it made his skin crawl at first, it had since become something he actually enjoyed seeing. He supposed the blond even looked good in it, the black coloring contrasted nicely with his slightly tanned skin.

As the blond situated himself against the mattress- body sliding and arching in a way that was way too dramatic for Sakusa’s liking- Sakusa scrolled down the page until half of the video was hidden. Beneath the video was a description box where the number of views, likes, and dislikes sat. Sakusa was surprised to see the dislike button wasn’t hidden; he’d seen a lot of videos where the user had disabled it. But this one was there, with a glaring 300,000 next to the button. Almost half.

The date of the upload was present too. He raised an eyebrow. Five years old. Beside the date was the uploader’s name. _Tenko_. Heavenly fox. Sakusa wasn’t surprised in the slightest when he took in the uploader’s profile picture; it was the same blond guy who was wearing the lingerie. The photo looked professional. Tenko was lazily smiling at the camera, eyes drooping, lips curling, and head tilting. He knew he looked good, he knew people watched him. It was an easy thing to realize once you looked at the number of subscribers next to his name.

The number wasn’t that impressive compared to the female AV actors he had seen, but for a man who starred in videos with other men? It was _big_.

Sakusa wondered what made this guy so special.

The sound of wet kisses and soft whimpers drifted into his earbuds, a reminder of the video that was still playing, but he continued downward instead, bypassing the recommended videos in order to get to the comments. His eyes widened. There were almost one million of them. He didn’t bother reading them, he learned the hard way most comments on AV’s were cruder than the content itself.

“ _Ahh_ ,” a particularly lustful cry entered his ears, causing him to jump. Maybe it was time to scroll back up. After taking a deep breath, he dragged the mouse over the bar and lifted it up, revealing… He raised an eyebrow. The blond, Tenko, had his cheek pressed against the folded arms beneath his head just like in the thumbnail, mouth open and pink tongue swiping against plump lips. The other man knelt at the foot of the bed, face buried and hidden between Tenko’s cheeks.

Sakusa grunted, but the sound wasn’t because he found anything happening on screen _arousing_. This was the type of foreplay he wasn’t into, and would probably never be into. His skin crawled every time something like this happened in a video because his mind immediately went to the sanitation aspects of the deed. How could it be clean enough to _lick_? A shiver of disgust slid down his spine. If he didn’t skip to a different scene, he would have to call it a night.

He clicked on the ten minute mark and moans erupted into his ears with such vigor, he leaned back in surprise. Their positions were different now with Tenko on top of the nameless man, hips swiveling and bouncing, his own dick moving with him, up and down with speed tipping on the edge of reckless, yet there was a gracefulness to Tenko’s movements even though there shouldn’t be. Because this was just sex, a dramatized version of an already disgusting act, but somehow Tenko made it look artistic.

Pretty.

Tenko’s thighs flexed with muscle as he used them to push himself up and down. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, blond hair falling away from his forehead, revealing a flawless forehead that didn’t seem to have a drop of sweat against it. Sakusa wondered if the lighting just made it harder to see. He narrowed his eyes as he took in the rest of Tenko’s face. The small hums coming from Tenko couldn’t be considered moans; they weren’t wild or loud, instead they were controlled. Quiet. He was certain he wouldn’t be able to hear them if he weren’t wearing earbuds.

Tenko was even smiling. It was a soft expression, nothing too joyous, but it was still there as he tilted his head further back and hummed with every downward swivel of his hips. Tenko moved with the grace of a god, and didn’t even pretend to be ashamed like so many did in other videos. He knew he was good, knew he was the center of countless fantasies of countless men. It was a genuine confidence not many had, even in AVs. The answer to why Tenko had so many followers was clear.

The nameless man finally moved- he may have been moving before, but Sakusa hadn’t been paying him any attention- to place one large hand against Tenko’s ass. Tenko’s eyes snapped open. He snatched the man’s wrist away from his ass and pinned it over the man’s head, sliding back and forth instead of up and down now. He lowered his head, breath coming in sudden rasping breaths, and grinned defiantly at the man he so obviously held power over.

“ _Not tonight, Daddy._ ”

The hissed words slid through Sakusa’s earbuds and nestled against his eardrums. The voice was a teasing purr bordering on a growl. It was something Sakusa had never heard before, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he liked the way it made his stomach warm. He tried concentrating on Tenko’s dialect instead of the alluring lilt of his voice. Was it said in the Kansai dialect? The other man definitely spoke in one of the main Tokyo dialects, or just standard Japanese.

Sakusa drew his focus back to the video, deciding to stop thinking about pointless things like an AV star’s dialect. On the screen, Tenko had stopped bouncing and was instead maneuvering himself so his hands were gripping the man’s shins behind him. His own knees were bent, thighs spread and straddling the thick waist of the man, but this new position allowed Tenko to let his head hang back. It couldn’t have been comfortable, but then again Sakusa couldn’t imagine any part of this being comfortable to begin with.

Tenko snapped his hips, and the man below him moaned. His next few bounces were rough just like his first before he started back into his previous rhythm. His back was perfectly arched with only the slightest of visible tremors racing through his arms and thighs. A pink tongue darted out followed by quick, breathless pants. Sakusa waited for Tenko’s tongue to disappear, but it stayed out, curling and sliding between his teeth. It was clear the control Tenko had earlier was giving way to pleasure. It wasn’t the faux pleasure so many on this website tried to create either, it was genuine.

With his body language, Tenko was able to perfectly express the pleasure coursing through his veins.

It was something Sakusa wasn’t used to, and he most definitely wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

“ _Make me come_ ,” Tenko hissed as he straightened himself again, back still curved in a way that reminded Sakusa of a crescent moon. He pressed his hands against the man’s sternum and used that as a leverage to move himself, but he wasn’t looking at the man. Instead he turned his head to face the camera, amber eyes glistening in the ring of the camera and lips dropped in an ‘O’ shape. Sakusa almost leaned back from the intensity of that vulpine like gaze.

“ _Please_ ,” he whined, borderline pathetically, “ _make me come_.”

Something dark and cruel stirred in the pits of Sakusa’s stomach right as the blood rushed to an unacknowledged appendage hidden behind his lifted thighs. Every cell within him froze when he felt the flutter inside of his sweats. No, it couldn’t- _was his body being serious?_

Sakusa ripped the earbuds from his ears and slammed his laptop shut. His heart was galloping in his chest, pulsing in his ears and against the side of his neck with little abandon. He was wrong, or rather his mind was playing tricks on him because there was no way in hell… He tilted his head back and blinked at the ceiling, trying to concentrate on his breathing. One… two… three…

“Oh, come one,” he grumbled. “You’re acting like this is such a big deal when it _isn’t_. It’s natural.”

Or rather it was natural for most men, not exactly for Sakusa Kiyoomi.

He peeled his thighs away from his chest and planted his socked feet onto the hardwood floor, taking a final deep breath before looking down. His eyes didn’t even widen as he took in the very obvious bulge in his pants. His mind hadn’t been playing tricks on him, it was glaringly obvious what happened. No matter how taboo society viewed the act to be, it was a natural process for men, Sakusa knew this.

But he also knew he wasn’t like most men, not when it came to this.

Sakusa got to his feet and padded over to the light switch on the wall separating the rest of the flat from the hallway, and flicked one of them down, sending the flat into darkness. He swept his tired eyes to the balcony windows, half tempted to walk outside and let the cool night breeze blow away whatever it was that just happened as if it were nothing more than dust layering his skin, but the uncomfortable weight in his pants made him choose the path to his bedroom instead.

Luckily, the clothes he was wearing could be considered pajamas so he didn’t have to change into anything and risk accidentally bumping something- a certain something on him that would probably relish the contact. He pulled the duvet back and nestled into his warm bed, hesitating before he reached for the pillow beside his own that usually acted as the thing he cuddled during the night. Maybe he shouldn’t tonight... No, it was foolish to think that.

He wrapped his arms around it and buried his face on top of it, inhaling the fresh smell of lavender dryer sheets. It soothed the odd feeling in his chest.

He was not going to think about the actor Tenko, and he especially wasn’t going to allow himself to think about what the hell had just happened. That was for another day. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, not at all. It was normal. And like a normal person who had just finished watching porn, he was going to close his eyes, fall asleep, and wake up to his alarm tomorrow morning.

Let the external noises of the city drown out his concerns until it was nothing more than a ringing in his ears, like always.

.

“I’m so proud of you!” exclaimed Dr. Oikawa Tooru, licensed psychiatrist, from where he sat behind his mahogany desk. He pointed his StarWalker Montblanc pen in Sakusa’s direction from where he sat, stiffly and uncomfortably, behind the massive desk, trying his hardest not to look into the wide, chocolate eyes of the nightmarish assailant in front of him. “This calls for a celebration, Doctor.”

Sakusa frowned, knowing full well Oikawa would be able to see just how irritated he was even behind his mask. “No. It doesn’t.”

Unfortunately, Oikawa didn’t look convinced. It would take a lot more than just one little statement to dissuade someone like him, you would need a solid thesis and maybe an entire powerpoint presentation. As if to prove Sakusa’s point, Oikawa swiveled his chair around to face the calendar hanging on the side of the bookshelf beside his desk. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose before letting out an affirmative hum.

“I’m off two Monday’s from now. Let’s plan something that Sunday night.” Sakusa wondered if Oikawa was aware that _he_ probably wouldn’t be off then because _he_ didn’t get any sort of extended breaks since _he_ wasn’t planning a wedding. “We’ll go to one of those restaurants on the top of a skyscraper! How about it? I’ll even get specialized balloons that say ‘congrats on your erection’!”

Sakusa once again wondered why he put up with this ridiculous man. He sent Oikawa a withering glare while wishing the hospital floor would open up and swallow him whole. “You will _not_.” It was the next morning, and he had just finished telling Oikawa about the occurrence that had taken place the previous night, minus some of messier details like what the video had been about, even though Oikawa had the audacity to _ask_. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

The teasing glint in Oikawa’s eyes faded away, and his lips turned upside down. It wasn’t his infamous pout, thank the gods for that because Sakusa did not want to deal with that right now, but it was the look he put on when he spoke of a serious case or got into a debate with a colleague. Sakusa enjoyed seeing it on his sort of- therapist- turned- sort of- friend’s face. They had many a great conversation when Oikawa entered into his serious mode.

“No, you should have told me, and I’m very glad you did,” said Oikawa. “I know what we share is an informal relationship between therapist and client, but it’s a relationship none the less, albeit a weird one. You know I’m not making fun of you, I would never do something like that to you especially when it comes to something like this.”

Sakusa sighed. Of course he knew that. He also knew Oikawa had a completely different persona when it came to his real clients, the ones who were currently in-patient within the hospital’s psychiatric ward. He was the rare exception because they were not only colleagues, but had somehow turned into friends. His shoulders relaxed but the scowl didn’t leave his face.

“I just don’t see this as a big deal.”

“You’re a gifted doctor, Saku-chan, but the study of the psyche and all things influencing it is not your particular area of expertise.” Now a smile quirked at the corners of Oikawa’s mouth. He leaned over and picked up a gray stress ball sitting on his desk with the NASA logo printed on the side. He dug his nails into it as he said, “This is a step in the right direction. Everything we’ve been working on for the past five months is clearly paying off, even if it’s only affecting you subconsciously right now. I _am_ very proud of you, Sakusa.”

Ah, here was the reason Sakusa continued to talk with Oikawa. He pulled the absolute best out of his clients, even if he had to dig through layers of dust filled, rotten debris to get to it and present it to his clients. It wasn’t surprising he was one of the top candidates for the JSPN Fellowship Award.

Sakusa wasn’t entirely sure how to convey the warmth spreading through his chest, or the very slight burn in his eyes, so he decided to ignore them both. Oikawa might say otherwise, but he knew the man would never let him live it down if he started crying. “I suppose I should thank you for such kind words, even if a bastard like you doesn’t need to have his ego boosted.”

Oikawa’s smile grew even as his eyebrow twitched. “I’m choosing to ignore half of what you just said.”

The loud _ding_ from the intercom broke through the carefully crafted peace that seemed to constantly float through Oikawa’s office, causing Sakusa to jump. He recovered quickly enough to hear the clear voice of a woman say, “Dr. Sakusa, you have a call on line six. Dr. Sakusa, line six.”

Sakusa pulled the sleeve of his white lab coat back to reveal the black Rolex watch on his wrist. “Nine-thirty. I have a patient in thirty minutes, so I need to get going.”

“Line six is the line other hospitals use,” murmured Oikawa as he stood from his chair and walked around his desk with all the grace of a mythical fairy. “Do tell, are you planning on transferring without my permission, Saku-chan?”

He rolled his eyes as he stood up. Where had all of that maturity gone? “It’s probably Doctor Tanaka. She’s been assisting me during my rotation.”

“Dr. Tanaka from Seinaru Private Hospital?” Sakusa nodded. Oikawa hummed, a dreamy appearing on his face. “I swear her to be one of the most gorgeous people I’ve ever met. I still think our children would have rivaled the majesty of literal gods if we had gotten married.”

Sakusa scowled as he opened the door. He was quite certain if Oikawa weren’t so beautiful himself, he wouldn’t be able to get away with half of the shit he said. The halo effect was a powerful entity after all. “You’re getting married to a man, Oikawa-san.”

The dreamy wonder on Oikawa’s face gave way to a dopey smile and a faint reddening face. “It isn’t fair to compare Iwa-chan’s beauty to Tanaka-chan’s. Clearly Tanaka-chan would win.” Sakusa actually chuckled fondly. Sakusa didn’t know how Oikawa’s fiancé put up with such bullshit, but he had to give the man props.

“I’ll make sure Dr. Tanaka knows I work with creepy old men,” jeered Sakusa as he stepped out the door and into the relatively quiet hallway. The psychiatry wing was typically calmer than the other wings of the hospital, something Sakusa was quiet envious of. He stuffed his gloved hands into the pockets of his lab coat and spun on his heel just after witnessing Oikawa’s face turn into something ugly.

“You are _one year_ younger than me!” Sakusa just chuckled quietly as he started to walk away from Oikawa’s office. “Oh, don’t forget! This Friday is the bachelor party and you _still_ haven’t RSVP’d! I’ll come for your neck if you don’t show, Saku-chan!”

Sakusa lifted a hand from his pocket and waved even though his back was to Oikawa. Once he heard Oikawa huff, he slipped it back into his pocket and continued the walk out of the psychiatry ward.

.

Sakusa was an OB/GYN, currently on his thirteenth month of rotation for maternal-fetal medicine, the particular sub-specialty he was attempting to master. The job was never something Sakusa dreamt of having, especially since he used to be absolutely terrified of germs, but it was something he enjoyed. He was the calm most of his patient’s needed when they came in fretting, thinking they had a particular disease when it was just a common infection, and other things of that nature.

There weren’t many OB/GYN doctors at the hospital he worked at, and there certainly weren’t any other men in the field at the location he was at, something he never minded. It was a good job, in his opinion. As long as he kept his mask and gloves pulled up, he could handle the germs. And the people he worked with weren’t unbearable, at least not all of them.

He was washing his hands in one of the examination rooms, having just finished with a patient, and his personal favorite nurse- the bar wasn’t exactly high considering who her competition was- was flitting around beside him, tidying everything up. “How was your night last night, Doctor?” Nurse Yachi asked, having since gotten comfortable enough around Sakusa to not tremble when she spoke to him.

Sakusa, however, felt like the anxious one now. He froze, soapy hands still trapped beneath the water. There was no way Yachi knew about last night, it was next to impossible. It was just an innocent question asked by an innocent girl. Nothing more, nothing less. He swallowed back the unexplainable bile that had risen in his throat and continued to thoroughly wash his hands.

“Simple,” he decided on. “Nothing of interest happened. What about your night?”

“Oh, mine was fine!” Yachi had finished wiping down the equipment and was currently in the middle of cleaning the tools. She set down the speculum she had been cleaning and sent Sakusa a bedazzling smile, blonde ponytail resting against a pink scrub clad shoulder. “I went with Tadashi and Tsukishima to a cat café! Have you ever been to one of those? They had some of the cutest cats I had ever seen!”

Sakusa cringed just from the thought. “Animals aren’t exactly my thing.” The tiniest seed of guilt planted itself in his heart, and he quickly mumbled out, “But I’m glad you had a good time.” He cut the faucet off and dried his hands before pulling a new pair of gloves from the box beside the sink. “I’m taking my lunch now. I’ll see you in an hour with our next patient.”

“Have a nice lunch, Doctor!” Yachi called before the door swung behind Sakusa’s retreating back.

A quick glance at his watch told him it was only twelve-thirty, giving him a solid twenty minutes to eat while the rest of his break, quote on quote, would be time spent finishing paperwork, writing up patient notes, and filing away important documents. There was always something to do.

Pressing himself to the wall, Sakusa walked down the hall, passing scurrying nurses and confident doctors. He kept his chin down as he walked, making sure not to meet anyone in the eye. Eye contact usually led to conversations, and Sakusa was not in the mood for small talk or any kind of talk right now unless it was of dire importance, and even though he worked in a hospital, it usually never was. He kept his hands shoved into the pockets of his lab coat, and tensed his shoulders, trying to make himself as small as possible despite his rather bulky size.

“You and Iwa-chan are so muscle-y,” Oikawa had once lamented, ever so eloquently showing off the vocabulary skills that surely aided him in getting his PhD. “Of course, there’s no comparing the two of you, Iwa-chan is a Hellenic god, but the point still stands. You’re like a marbled statue.”

He nearly slammed his shoulder into the wall when two doctors passed him with barely any sort of space between their elbows. A whole hallway and some still chose to walk in the damn middle of it. Quickening his pace to avoid any other possible disasters, Sakusa bypassed the cafeteria and took the flight of stairs that sent him up to the non-intensive care unit, a quieter ward that was usually filled with nurses and visitors, not many others. Turning left at the first corridor, however, sent you straight to one of the breakrooms, and it was the one Sakusa always ate in. No one else ever seemed to, they were either in the cafeteria or a more conveniently placed breakroom.

As soon as he stepped inside, he pressed his back to the door and let out a long sigh, his minty breath filling his mask. He was much more tired than usual today despite his day only being half over. He wondered if his premature exhaustion had anything to do with last night. No. Nope, he wasn’t going to think about that, not now, and not ever as long as he had anything to say about it. With those thoughts pushed into the darker layers of his mind, he peeled himself from the door and headed to the kitchenette of the breakroom where most kept their bento boxes.

Today, just like every other day, his was the only one there, wrapped in a yellow cloth with tiny white stoats decorating the sides. It had been a gag gift from his cousin, but he liked using it anyway. He plucked up his lunch and took it to the plush couch directly facing the door, body aching like he were a forty-nine year old-man instead of a twenty-nine year-old one.

With great care, Sakusa removed his mask and then his gloves, making sure to make minimal contact with his actual skin just in case there were any lingering germs. Once that was taken care of, he finally untied the cloth and opened the box. It wasn’t much, nothing like his aunt used to make for him during his school days, but it was enough. Simple. He pulled a part his chopsticks and lowered them into the small pile of umeboshi when the door opened.

“Oh. This ain’t a doctor’s office.”

The words were said in the Kansai dialect, and as far as Sakusa knew, most of the employees here were Tokyo based. It must have been a patient then. He looked up, ready to reprimand the poor wayward soul that was intruding within his fragile peace, but the words died on his tongue the moment he laid eyes on the man, the umeboshi between his chopsticks completely forgotten. Because the man standing in the threshold of the doorway- the man now _walking into what was clearly the wrong room_ was the exact man who gave him… who his mind deemed attractive enough to give him an erection just twelve hours ago.

Everything was the same. The dyed hair that looked more yellow than blond, the wisps of it that fell atop his forehead, and the dark undercut. There were new details too, things Sakusa hadn’t picked up on from just one video; the thick eyebrows, the black studs in his ear lobes, and the smile lines around his lips, though from the date on the video, those probably weren’t present then.

By the gods, Sakusa needed to get out of the breakroom. There was a window somewhere in the back. If he crawled over the countertop and kicked in the glass, there was a ten story drop, the only thing separating him from the hard concrete below. He would gladly make the jump if it got him out of speaking to the fucking _actor_ in front of him.

The man sauntered inside, dressed in black jeans and a simple gray hoodie that was missing the drawstrings. He finally paused and shoved his hands into his pockets, sighing to himself. “That damn receptionist gave me stupid directions.” And then, just like in the video, vulpine eyes slid Sakusa’s way and paused on him. They blinked. “Oh.” An easy smile. “Hey, sorry ‘bout this. You a doctor? I hope so, cause I’m kind of turned around. I’m trying to find some guy named Kita? He’s a doctor.”

Sakusa knew Doctor Kita Shinsuke. He was a GN, on a completely different floor than the NICU. Sakusa also knew the receptionist was a very capable woman who gave precise directions, meaning this guy either didn’t know how to listen or was a right idiot. From the easy, borderline flippant way the man held himself, Sakusa was leaning toward the former.

The man leaned all of his weight on one foot as he tilted his head to the side, hair falling with him. He arched an eyebrow, lips still curled in that damn smile. “Look, sorry to disturb your lunch, but I sprained my wrist and I kind of need it to work for my job, so if you could just tell me where Dr. Kita is, I’ll be on my way.”

And then, because Sakusa was clearly a smart man with a PhD and eight years of medical training under his belt, the only thing his mind could come up with was a name. It came out ragged and deep, strangled and desperate. He should have been lucky it didn’t crack.

“Tenko.”

The window was only five feet away from him, even less if he sprinted.

Tenko’s entire face seemed to freeze, lazy smile and narrowed eyes forever imprinted in Sakusa’s mind. Maybe he hadn’t heard, maybe he was someone else entirely- a twin, or, even better, a figment of Sakusa’s imagination. But the gods were against him just like they always were.

“Oh.” Strangely enough, Sakusa recalled one of the most famous Yokai myths, the one involving the kitsune, fox spirits with the ability to shapeshift into humans. Sometimes they were benevolent, other times they were the complete opposite. Sakusa had never considered himself superstitious, but as Tenko stood before him with a sly grin stretched across his face and amber eyes narrowed in what could only be described as malicious delight, he truly believed he was standing face-to-face with a kitsune. “It seems I’ve found myself a fan.”

The door behind Tenko suddenly clicked shut, and it took Sakusa a good moment to realize someone must have shut it.

Tenko shut it.

Falling from a ten story height had never seemed so appealing before today.

**Author's Note:**

> Stalk my tumblr: [cutie-satori](https://cutie-satori.tumblr.com/)


End file.
